Beijing to set up more outpatient clinics for rabies vaccination

Beijing's health authorities are requiring districts and counties to set up more outpatient clinics to provide rabies vaccination, and to raise public awareness of rabies prevention among urban and rural residents.

The municipal health bureau also urged medical institutes to transfer suspected cases of rabies to You'an Hospital or Ditan Hospital for diagnosis, treatment and quarantine.

The Chinese capital also wants districts and counties to track animals that bite people and ensure the animals are properly disposed of.

Beijing currently has 45 outpatient clinics providing inoculations against rabies. They are required to be open 24 hours a day and make regular reports to local centers for disease control and prevention.

Although no permanent resident of Beijing has contracted rabies, nine people who contracted rabies in other parts of the country were brought to Beijing for treatment in local hospitals before they died. One woman living in Beijing, who was not a permanent resident here, contracted rabies from a dog she had brought from outside the city.

The disease has killed more than 2,000 people in other parts of the country this year.

Despite the local government's good record of controlling rabies, more than 110,000 Beijing residents have received rabies inoculations to prevent the onset of the disease after they were bitten or scratched by a dog or cat, said the bureau on Friday.

This year, Beijing has registered 550,000 dogs, 90,000 more than last year.

Rabies, often spread by dogs, attacks the nervous system and is fatal in humans if not treated prior to the onset of symptoms.

Local authorities have begun a two-month campaign to remove stray dogs from the capital's streets.

All dogs without city-issued licenses can be caught and handed to public security offices for inoculation, according to a municipal meeting on dog management on Thursday.

This year, the local police have rounded up 8,961 unlicensed dogs, of which 831 were strays.

Dog owners who do not register or vaccinate their pets can be fined up to 5,000 yuan (625 U.S. dollars), according to city regulations. The city police have detained 16 dog owners for violating the regulations.

It costs 1,000 yuan (125 U.S. dollars) to register a dog in Beijing and annual dog licence fees are 500 yuan.

China recorded 2,254 rabies cases in the first nine months of the year, a 30 percent increase from the same period last year.

In Shanghai, digital ID chips have been implanted in 65,000 dogs to improve canine management and prevent the spread of rabies.

The chips contain the dog's ID number, inoculation record and owner's address.

Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality has reported 13 rabies cases this year, more than the total number of cases in the past five years.

During the first nine months of the year, 72,140 people in Chongqing were vaccinated against rabies, compared with 55,230 in 2003.

Source: Xinhua